Shifting of bad debts, uneconomic facilities away from investors onto taxpayers or ratepayers.

[kristopher]

Shifting of bad debts, uneconomic facilities away from investors onto taxpayers or ratepayers.

In a competitive market, if costs of nuclear power, including debt service, rose too high, investors would lose money and plants might close. Historically, nuclear power has operated in a regulated environment. Above-market costs were shifted to ratepayers via higher power tariffs; or through plant cancellations, for which ratepayers remained liable. As markets were deregulated, these costs were packaged in other ways – ‘stranded cost’ surcharges in the United States. A ‘fossil fuel levy’ (FFL) was added to fossil plants in the United Kingdom in an effort to keep nuclear competitive. The sums were sizeable: the FFL was about 10% of all electricity bills, worth roughly £1 billion per year. Nuclear-related surcharges, write-offs, and stranded cost allocations (discussed below) were hundreds of billions of US dollars.

Efforts to recreate the regulatory conditions that protected nuclear investors twenty years ago are once again resurgent. Loan guarantees support this outcome, as do a growing number of US states that are allowing nuclear investors to collect from ratepayers while construction is still in process, and even if a plant is abandoned prior to completion. - p. 79



The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2009 With Particular Emphasis on Economic Issues
By
Mycle Schneider
Independent Consultant, Mycle Schneider Consulting, Paris (France)
Project Coordinator
Steve Thomas
Professor for Energy Policy, Greenwich University (UK)
Antony Froggatt
Independent Consultant, London (UK)
Doug Koplow
Director of Earth Track, Cambridge (USA)

Paris, August 2009

Commissioned by
German Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Reactor Safety

http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/nuclear-power-an-obstacle-to.pdf

[Statistical]

1. You are against a fossil fuel levy? Which i In other words is a carbon tax.

All emission free power sources (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear) were exempt from paying the FFL while carbon emitting sources (fossil fuels) were required to.

By raising the economic cost of fossil fuels closer to the true externalized cost (pollution, climate change, millions of deaths worldwide) it creates an economic incentive from utilities to shift from fossil fuels to low carbon sources. The reality is fossil fuels are incredibly cheap. Utilities don't burn coal because they like fucking up the planet; they burn coal because it is a very cheap (when ignoring externalized costs).

However the FFL is no longer in effect. It was replaced with Climate Change Levy. Nuclear power is required to pay the levy despite it being a carbon free source of power. It is the only carbon free source of power required to pay the levy.

[kristopher]

3. Nuclear is a boondoggle

Background

The Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation was put in place under the powers of the Electricity Act 1989, under which electricity generation in the UK was privatised. The original intention was to provide financial support to the UK nuclear power generators, which continued to be state owned. The proposals were enlarged in scope before the Obligtion was brought into operation in 1990 to include the renewable energy sector. Contracts from the last three rounds remain in place with the generators receiving the agreed amount from the NFPA and the NFPA effectively taking ownership of the Renewables Obligation Certifiate (ROC) which the generator is entitled to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Fossil_Fuel_Obligation

[joshcryer]

6. Of course he is.

[NNadir]

2. Wow. Economics class from Greenpeace.

Who the fuck cares what those consumer brats with bad educations think?

Their fucking idea of a serious conversation is to drive in their stupid cars to the edge of a glacier, get naked, and in some convoluted puerile exercise dedicated to "look at me!!!!!!!! I'm series" show how fucking clueless they are.



http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/naked-glacier-tunick-08182007

These morons have done more to damage Earth's atmosphere through appeals to ignorance than any similar oblivious collection of people who couldn't pass PChem in human history.

[kristopher]

4. Wow. Economics class from someone that can't even figure out who wrote a report.

It isn't a GreenPeace report, although even if it were there would be nothing wrong with that fact.

"Commissioned by German Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Reactor Safety

"


Link to report provided by Greenpeace.

[Statistical]

5. Germany: "burn baby burn"

Germany the fossil fuel king of Europe.

Amazing they would be against tarrifs on fossil fuels. Yup no conflict of interest there.

[kristopher]

7. You have lost all links with reality

Germany commissions a 108 page report and that means Germany has a conflict of interest because of one sentence about England?

[kristopher]

8. Kick